I'm so building some kind of earthen circular home someday. If you've never been in one and come across one, go inside it if you can. It feels completely different than a wood frame and insulation house. Being surrounded by earth is literally grounding and calming.

I fantasize about making a circular bed that you have to kind of crawl down into, that's all super fluffy inside like a nest, and hanging some kind of changing color rainbow light sculpture on top of it. A friend pointed out to me that that sounds like a tripper crib. Giggle.

At some point I'd like to travel around helping make sacred spaces for people, with earthen architecture and arts. My friend James Gyre at Naked Geometry makes incredible laser cut wooden panels. One way to get natural air conditioning is to put a grid like that at the bottom of a fire flue and wet it - some of the geometries you see in middle eastern architecture are functional!

I have been researching financial permaculture lately - using the 3 ethics of permaculture (Care of Earth, Care of People, and Fair Share of Surplus) to inform how one runs a business. I'll eventually write a longer post summarizing the organizations I've been learning about, but here is one now!

The Ecotrust Foundation acts as an incubator for social enterprise, and a capital vehicle for organizations that inspire change toward healthy ecosystems and resilient communities.

"Ecotrust believes that the wellbeing of people and the planet are inextricably linked. We believe that diverse, healthy ecosystems are the foundations of healthy communities, which together form the bedrock for healthy economies. Nurture people and nature, and business thrives."

Here is a spread of the areas they focus on. Please join me in thinking about business and commerce in consideration of this kind of scale:

Permaculture people are my heroes. Mark Lakeman of City Repair is one of them, rocking it with urban design solutions that bring community together to interact between the box spaces of work and home, making living art out of streets and yards.

This keynote speech from the Northern California Permaculture Convergence gives a great overview of his work and the many projects City Repair has engendered. Mark talks about children coming up with design solutions, solar-powered cob neighborhood kiosks, and when people start to become so powerful that they just state to the bureaucrats what's going to happen. This interview is jam-packed with inspiration and replicable projects.

One of my favorite excerpts from this talk is a description of Portland having the first public bike parking shelter in the history of the grid. When the mayor of Portland came to cut the ribbon on the structure, he said: "I didn't even plan to say this today, but I'm the executive of the city and today I declare all these [city repair] projects will be free of permit. The city will insure all these things. We are getting out of the way of facilitating this, because we have a lot to do, and a lot not to do."

"We employ tools of permaculture, natural building and placemaking to create ecological and social relationships that are cyclical, interconnected, symbiotic, and life-affirming. The energetic outputs of our house feeds our gardens, our landscapes, and our communities, which then feed us. We are currently engaged in projects to correct the inefficient, wasteful, and resource intensive structures of our house in order to create a home that is built from natural, local and living materials, and powered by captured energies that pass naturally through our landscape."

Ecotivity.org is a website dedicated to connecting people, projects, and resources for building ecovillages today. It was founded by Shayna Gladstone, who is a resident at Emerald Village in San Diego and writes for Shareable.net

The picture to the left is of The Tennessee TechVillage Project:

"The jewel of Tennessee Tech Village is a thriving community of entrepreneurs, craftsman, builders, technologists, designers, fabricators, and other creative souls that came for many reasons, but whose main objective is to build something amazing. Some are visitors, some are permanent residents. Inside of Tennessee Tech Village are safety courses to learn the equipment, machine shops for wood and metal projects, welding stations, work areas for electronics, computer stations for research and design, and a large selection of equipment and tools for community use. But perhaps best of all is the community of people who often have exciting projects of their own, or maybe there to help while learning from others.But in the village, there is more to life than just innovation and work. Take a walk around the community and you will find large organic gardens, extensive animal husbandry with chickens, goats, rabbits, cattle, ducks, temporary living quarters for visitors, and more."...